FINALLY! - A Carbon Fiber Guitar I Can Actually Afford!

welcome back to the channel you guys hope you're all doing very well today as you can see we've got well a pretty interesting guitar to share with you guys in the studio today and beyond just its interesting construction the shape the sound hole uh there's a couple other hidden features that make this guitar pretty interesting so let's jump in and check it out yes welcome back to the channel you guys as i mentioned we've got something very cool to share with you this week i mean just look at the top of this guitar absolutely incredible looks so cool i'm a huge fan of carbon fiber but the downside of carbon fiber guitars is well they've always been horribly expensive there's huge advantages to using carbon fiber especially in acoustic guitars but the price tag has always been up here and when you look at this guitar and you look at the top you look at the shape of it the sound hole it all looks very expensive and high-end but this is actually the most affordable full-size carbon fiber guitar i've ever played with the base model coming in well under a thousand dollars that's pretty much unheard of in today's market so what we're going to do is find out what the heck this thing is what it sounds like what the hidden features are on it and kind of get into the whole thing so here we go let's dive in so what exactly is this guitar well it's from a company called enya now these guys make everything from entry-level ukuleles all the way up to very expensive wooden guitars and everything in between including this model so this is the ea x4 pro ea standing for acoustic electric we'll talk about that in a second because there's some great features on there especially for the price point but of course the show stopper is that carbon fiber top very cool very reflective but yeah it looks looks excellent and of course the offset sound hole so when you kind of tilt it back into your body to play you do get some nice projection here including some you know big bass coming out of here that would kind of go maybe more unnoticed if it was a central uh sound hole so yeah interesting design for sure now i'll link to it in the video description below for all the specs but here are the highlights now in terms of the tuning machines we've got gold hardware looks really nice they look sort of like a godo clone to me um they're just kind of branded and you have professional tuners they do feel good and they do work really well as well so that's great we've got a tusk nut that's always great to see you know a nice professional nut there and we've got the tusk saddle as well so on both ends of the string you've got some tusk carbon fiber top now on the back and the sides you can see it's completely different it's more of a matte material nice rounding i got to say here too it's very comfortable on the body so this is like what they call like a carbon fiber composite so it's basically feels like plastic on the back um so it's some sort of i don't know if it's a proprietary resin kind of thing but the top is like the the actual carbon fiber weave and everything else is sort of like yeah that matte look as well so i should mention there's not a stitch of wood on this guitar which means should you take it you know out into the winter into your vehicle or wherever you don't have to worry about that big temperature swing from your you know warm and relatively humid house into that dry cold air or vice versa you know if you want to take it somewhere hot and humid and then to a cold climate or whatever so that's the huge advantage doesn't matter the temperature swings the humidity swings guitars like this handle it all in stride and you're never going to have to change the action so once you have it set up just the way you like it well you should never have to tweak it well now it's time to find out what the heck this thing sounds like now every acoustic guitar has its own unique voice depending on the body shape the body thickness whether it's a cedar top whether it's a spruce top or whether it's a carbon fiber top so before we do that we need to quickly look at the preamp because as i mentioned there's a nice hidden feature in here especially for the price point you know disregarding the fact that you know this is a carbon fiber instrument well we've got onboard effects so pressing down on the volume control you can see it lights up there and we've got our traditional tone control traditional you know volume control that's all you know usual stuff but we've got a built-in mic that we can blend in we also have chorus and delay you know two types of verb it's all there and not only does it come out you know here and you know you can plug that into an acoustic amp or into a di box and into your pa system or whatever but there's a built-in actuator which means all the effects should you choose will come right out of the guitar and you don't have to plug it into an amp an effects unit anything it all comes out of the actuator inside the guitar and out the sound hole now i've used guitars like this in the past and i love it it's i absolutely use that every time i play this guitar so it's great it's got a usb charger right there as well so yeah i don't know if you guys can hear that i'll face my mic but i've got some verb and delay coming straight out of the guitar which is going to be super fun to play with so we're going to experiment with that and of course if you don't want to use it you can just hold that power button down or the volume button down and it will power off so that's how that works so we're going to experiment with just like the pure tone of the guitar because we do want to see what it's going to sound like we're just going to mic it up with a single mic keep it simple and then we're going to dial in some chorus and some of the verbs and just see what that sounds like and as i mentioned for a guitar in this price range to have the carbon fiber yeah and then to have this kind of preamp in it is pretty incredible so anyway let's uh yeah get the mic going here set everything up and listen to some tones all right you guys let's find out what the x4 pro sounds like i should remind you i'm not plugged into anything at all i have my mic right here the oc 18 from austrian audio and everything you're hearing is coming directly from the sound hole to the mic and that's it all the effects everything is coming directly from inside the guitar so i do have the preamp on as you can see there so we've got some delay and some verb and let's just play an e minor 9 so you guys can sort of hear what that sounds like [Music] [Music] [Music] so yeah that you know verb really does give you know a nice spacious tone of course with that delay as well [Music] just great to have that on board [Music] [Music] now i'll turn that off and just sort of play something similar so that's kind of like the pure tone of the guitar itself and then let's put the effects back in there it goes [Music] so really great and of course if you don't want the delay i'll just take it right out and all we'll have is the verb [Music] let's try adding a little bit of chorus here so i'll dial that in and uh you know what let's leave a little bit of that verb on as well [Music] [Music] so here are my final thoughts on the ea x4 pro so we'll go through a few things i like about this guitar uh some things i didn't like about it uh the overall sound the overall construction all of those things right here so here we go now in terms of the overall design of this instrument i think people who are interested in carbon fiber guitars are probably not traditionalists um and so you know for me looking at the design of this guitar uh the top the offset hole the cutaway the headstock shape everything i think this is a really beautiful design i think it's really awesome and for somebody you know who maybe you know doesn't have a carbon fiber guitar and doesn't want to spend like two to three thousand dollars this is to me a really beautiful design and the price point is very attractive now where did they save the money because you know to offer a guitar at this price um where did they make concessions and it's on the back and sides so the top gets that full weave carbon fiber and then the back side it's nicely rounded feels very good yeah so no carbon fiber weave anywhere but the top so that's kind of where they save the money and then they use some sort of composite here it feels very plasticky not a deal breaker you know by any stretch but you need to know it does feel not like a traditional carbon fiber weave on the back so that's where they saved the money they gave you a really nice gorgeous top and then the back and sides are just like molded composite i guess they would call it so that's kind of where yeah the dollars were saved is it a deal breaker not to me personally because the advantages of not you know having to worry about guitars cracking especially where i live you know in canada going from a relatively moist warm house out into a cold vehicle uh you know with a guitar like this you never even think twice which is just uh it's freeing you know not having to baby a really expensive nice guitar so there you go um yeah so overall construction very good on this guitar love to see you know the tusk knot the tusk saddle those little touches are really nice and of course the elixir string so overall construction on this instrument is very good i was actually really impressed you know no molding marks you know the corners the edges everything very very nice so construction wise really liked it but yeah they definitely saved and it's sort of a shame not to have the carbon fiber weave everywhere but i do know it would raise the price all right now let's talk about the tone now i'm just going to address the acoustic tone of this guitar once you plug it in and you've got your eq knobs and you know eq on the soundboard and all that kind of stuff you can make this guitar sound just the way you want it so i think you know that's very flexible but let's just talk about sitting down and playing with this guitar now the first thing i liked about it is yeah the built-in effects with the built-in actuator so you can have a little verb you can have a little delay you can have some surprisingly lush chorus as well you know just as you're playing if you want it i love the flexibility of that um and as i mentioned you know guitars at this price point would maybe have it on a wooden instrument but then you add you know yeah the aspect of the carbon fiber and pretty good so i love that what i didn't love is no on-board tuner that's actually sort of a feature miss on a guitar in this price point almost all of them with a preamp here will have a built-in tuner so i did miss that so i had to you know clip this to the headstock not a big deal but like i said on other guitars that usually will be if you have a preamp um the other thing is the knobs are very hard to see where they are there's a tiny little black nubby on the knobs and it's nearly impossible to see like i would just have to take like a white little dot marker or something or like a silver sharpie and like mark it on the top of the knob because you cannot tell where these knobs are and that drove me bonkers with this as i'm trying to like reproduce maybe some sounds i really love that amount of delay with whatever um yeah so you're just gonna have to dial it and find it so i think if they do another version you gotta have a little bit uh better you know visual representation of where the knobs are at uh but in terms of the functionality really easy to use you know you have your volume to blend it in and you've got your little delay sweep if you want it shorter just go one way if you want the repeats longer just go the other way very easy to use no digital menus or anything i love that but yeah in terms of ease of use need some better marked knobs on that but i get why they wanted to keep like a really clean look but yeah so i love the effects having them um yeah and other than that in terms of the acoustic tone um and i found this with other guitars too it has a much more spacious and open tone when you um have a light touch so if you're just doing some finger style maybe some alternate tunings maybe you're just doing some light picking and stuff like that arpeggios uh it has a really nice tone very well balanced lots of bass coming out of this upper sound hole as well so that sounds really great um if you want to play like pretty driving rhythm parts like where you're really digging in and stuff like that i found like the sounds just kind of like closed up on itself now that doesn't mean of course if you're playing on stage that will have a totally different effect than you know sitting by yourself and playing but i did notice that that if you play kind of hard all those frequencies just kind of tighten up and sound a little bit more narrow and when you just kind of like ease up it just kind of like opens up the guitar so and wooden guitars are like that as well so i did notice that about the tone but overall quite balanced when you just go through the string so yeah overall pretty impressed with the tone love the features of the built-in preamp and yeah other than that those are kind of things i really liked about this guitar and a few things where i think they could improve so if you haven't subscribed to the channel yet be sure to do so by clicking my face right here big thanks to the guys from enya for sending the guitar in i will link to it in the video description below you can check it out there other than that hope you guys have a great day the rest of my information tab store t-shirt store gear i use it'll all be down in the video description below have yourself a great day

Channel: Darrell Braun Guitar

Views: 287,886

Keywords: gibson les paul, epiphone les paul, gibson es-335, gibson es 335 vs les paul, les paul vs es-335 guitar, les paul standard, les paul vs es-335, darrell braun guitar, gibson vs epiphone les paul, gibson vs epiphone, gibson es 335, firefly, firefly guitar, firefly 338, firefly guitars, firefly fflp, firefly les paul, sire vs fender, epiphone les paul special, gibson les paul tribute, prs silver sky, prs se silver sky

Id: -h2fR95Wtrk

Length: 15min 33sec (933 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 29 2022